San Francisco City Guide

San Francisco Sights

Your interest is bound to be 'peaked' by all those hills.

The city's steepness makes for some wonderfully panoramic viewpoints. Spread out below you is an appetising mix of colourful neighbourhoods, bohemian history, mind-teasing art, innovative architecture and restorative parks. Go explore - by foot if you're particularly sprightly, by cable car if not.

San Francisco Nightlife

More bars than Alcatraz.

Hedonism must be built into the local DNA from the giddy days of gold fever: no doubt about it, San Franciscans like to get out. The city may be known for its restaurants, but its citizens spend even more of their time in bars, clubs and theatres.

Shopping San Francisco

Love to shop in the Haight for a one-in-a-million oddity.

San Francisco's shopping is best for small, quirky items. Sure, there are big department stores and an international selection of name-brand boutiques, but the oddities are a lot more fun. Check out Hayes Valley and the Haight for lateral-leaning goods.

Golden Gate Bridge

Views, Bridge, Architectural highlight

Strange but true: the elegant suspension bridge painted a signature shade called 'International Orange' was almost nixed by the Navy in favor of concrete pylons and yellow stripes. Joseph B Strauss correctly gets heaps of praise as the engineering mastermind behind this marvel. Only southbound traffic is charged a toll.

Commercial Street

Architectural feature

Back when the red lights of Commercial St could be seen down by the waterfront, this strip provided many provocative answers to the age-old question: 'What do you do with a drunken sailor?'

City Hall

Government

That mighty Beaux-Arts dome pretty much covers San Francisco's grandest ambitions and fundamental flaws. Designed by John Bakewell and Arthur Brown Jr in 1915 to top Paris for flair and outsize the cap capitol building dome in Washington DC, the dome was a little unsteady until its retrofit after the 1989 earthquake, when ingenious technology enabled the dome to swing on its base without raising alarm.